That was ugly! Today’s Morning Joe offered a prime example of the notion that the bitterest political fights are the ones between members of the same party. Joe Scarborough and Bill Kristol got into a nasty spat over Kristol’s accusation that in the early days of the campaign, Morning Joe had been supportive of Donald Trump, and by extension bears some responsibility for his rise.

An angry Scarborough shot back “you lied!” and laid out the case that he had declared early on that he wouldn’t vote for Trump, had analogized his call for a Muslim ban to Germany circa 1933, and said that Trump’s reluctance to reject David Duke’s endorsement was disqualifying.

Long after Kristol had left the set, Scarborough circled back to again condemn people “lying about what Mika and I said.”

Note: This Insurrectionist has followed Morning Joe‘s coverage of Trump throughout the campaign. Early on, the show was a lonely voice in the MSM saying that Trump had a real chance and needed to be taken seriously. But beyond that, the show was a friendly venue for Trump, resulting in him being a very frequent call-in guest.

Eventually, though, there’s no doubt that Scarborough became a scathing critic of Trump. Although even then, there was a point when the press reported a possible reconciliation between the two, and as we reported here, Scarborough’s tone once again became friendlier.

BILL KRISTOL: He’s going to be a failed, fluke presidential candidate and he should be ignored on election night and Republicans need to say that.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: A failed fluke?

KRISTOL Yes. He won the nomination in a flukey way.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: A flukey way?

MIKA: They elected him, and nominated him. That’s not a fluke!

KRISTOL: Well, I hope it was a fluke.

MIKA: He defeated 16 people.

KRISTOL: He did, and that’s unfortunate. Some Republicans refused to support him and he’s going to lose the general election.

MIKA: That’s not a fluke!

KRISTOL: I think it was a fluke in some ways. And in other ways, he tapped into some deep anxieties. I mean, he got a minority of the vote.

MIKA: A fluke is something no one expected.

KRISTOL: He got a minority–okay, fine. The Republican party [inaudble: ‘should feel bad’?]– does that make you feel better? Does that make you feel better about it, Mika? You feel great because the Republican party nominated a guy who is really a bad guy as president and you think it’s funny and amusing.

MIKA: No, I actually think Republicans need to come clean on themselves, including leaders of the Republican party.

KRISTOL: Well thank you. What does come clean on themselves mean.

MIKA: Be honest about what’s right and wrong.

KRISTOL: What’s wrong is Donald Trump. This show — this show [sarcastic tone] was very tough — this show was really tough on Trump in late 2015 and early 2016.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: We were.

KRISTOL: Are you going to pretend that?

JOE: We were.

KRISTOL: Oh fine. If that’s your way of rewriting history, that’s fine with you guys.

MIKA: You mean when Joe hung up on him when he wouldn’t answer a question. Do you mean when he peppered him with questions —

KRISTOL: A lot of people accommodated Donald Trump at different times. But I’m not going to get into it, we don’t have to [relitigate?] this.

JOE: No, no, no. You just did. You lied. Please don’t come on my air and lie. You said in late ’15, in early December — I can’t even believe you are doing this, I don’t know why you’re so bitter.

KRISTOL: I’m not bitter. I’m trying to say that Republicans need to —

JOE: You’re practically crying. You’re practically crying.

KRISTOL: I am upset about this election. I think it’s a sin that Donald Trump is the nominee

JOE: In early December — in early December 2015 we compared it to Germany 1933 what he was doing.

KRISTOL: Oh, that’s just junk, really.

JOE: Really?

KRISTOL: Really. And you treated him that way when he called in, is that right?

JOE: Yeah, we treated him tough.

KRISTOL: [sarcastic] You treated him tough. You asked the most tough questions.

JOE: Really quickly, I think we need to stop right here for one second, Mika, and explain. Now, for 95% of the people who watch this show you know that since last September we have said that we can’t vote for Donald Trump and you know that in December after this — what was — this Muslim ban said I could never vote for a Republican that proposed that and also said this is what Nazi Germany looked like — or what Germany probably looked like in 1933. After David Duke — again, that was three months before any vote was cast in the primary. If we just want to get the timeline straight.

Because we’ve had so many people lying about what Mika and I have said. Really, if it were just on Twitter that would be one thing but it’s actually a lot of media people actually lying. They never get the timeline right. So even three months beforehand, David Duke, I said it was disqualifying, first thing I wrote for the Washington Post, I said when he was ignorant about David Duke, that that was disqualifying, I think that was like in March. Anyway, I say all this to say a lot of people probably watching this morning and they’re saying oh, God, what are they doing and we get a lot of people that just aren’t smart, that are extremists on the far left or far right saying oh, they’re for Donald Trump. No we’re not. We’re actually for accuracy here.

Comments

Kristol is an example of everything wrong in D.C. and the Government. He is long, long, past his time to leave the stage, but continues to stay because he is making BIG $$ yapping on TV and the media. I stopped listening to him a long time ago.

Look, Trump happened; let’s get over it. In a sane world, he never would have become the nominee, but, he happened, and, the GOP — both “never-Trumpers” and Trump supporters — needs to make up, get past it, and, most importantly, learn its lesson and understand and acknowledge that the Party should never, ever nominate such a transparently flawed, thoroughly unqualified, temperamentally infantile and, most importantly, thoroughly unlikeable candidate, ever again. Internecine fighting and spats and accusations over the farce of Trump’s candidacy will only ensure that Hillary will easily win a second term. And, unfortunately, an incumbent President is much harder to defeat than a non-incumbent candidate. So, we’re looking at eight glorious years of Queen Hillary the Vile’s rule, meaning that the earliest the GOP can realistically win the White House, is 2020. By which time, the electoral landscape won’t be any friendlier than it is today. So, let’s get it right next time, and not nominate an obnoxious, undisciplined buffoon with no sense of tact or political instincts, whose goal seems to be to insult, threaten or boast his way to gaining support.

The GOP has enough demographic challenges with the national electoral map as it currently stands, without hanging an albatross around its neck in the form of a toxic candidate who alienates key potential GOP voters with his non-stop douchebaggery and obnoxious persona. “Do no harm” should be the most basic candidate mantra — let’s nominate likeable candidates who are promoting an inclusive, big-tent message.

The disaster that is Trump’s candidacy will be compounded if the GOP doesn’t take stock of essential lessons to be learned from this sh!tshow.

We did learn something: That all the GOPe blathering about “you must support the nominee” in 2008 and 2012 was bullshit. That their refusal to support or actively sabotage actual conservatives like Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle, and Chris McDaniel in MS 2014 weren’t flukes, but their strategy to keep from actually having people elected who will fight Democrats.

And most importantly, that they should NEVER BE TRUSTED OR SUPPORTED AGAIN.

Well perhaps “In a sane world, he never would have become the nominee” but we don’t live in a sane world. In a sane world Hillary would be in jail, or at least under indictment.
In a sane world the Republicans like Kristol would have as much credibility as David Duke.

Complete crap. Joe gave Trump free air time with only minor challenging for months and months. How much time did he give the other 16 candidates?

That’s ALL that matters. Media gave Trump 90% of the time & the rest split 10%. They set him up for the nomination because he was easiest for Hillary to beat & gave Democrats chances to take Congress. Even Gilmore or Pataki would be beating her at this point – media knew that very well.

– –

Frankly, all I want to hear from Joe is the truth about his resigning from the House five months into a new term, and his relationship with the young woman staffer found dead in his district office. Until the lying scumbag does that, he should just STFU.

Both of these clowns people the Potemkin Village that socialists point to in order to legitimate their own anti democratic rule. The Potemkins quadrennially run genteel losers, really just socialist lite, towards whom the left can point and say, “see, we do have legitimate elections.”

As the rulers of #NeverTrump finally have to contemplate the meaning of a Pres Hillary, they have to distance themselves from the result they wished for. Trump’s candidacy must be the voter’s fault, it must be the media’s fault, it must be anyone’s fault but mine they cry. The #NT crowd here on LI has been distancing themselves since the scandals broke 2 weeks ago. #NT never had a plan to deal with the fallout from their position, and the plan now is to run away from the responsibility.

My hope is that Trump defeats them and, having proven that he (and the party) doesn’t need them, sweeps them to the trash.

It presupposes that people who won’t vote for a stinking, lying, PATHOLOGICAL Collectivist thug are incapable of thinking about the implications of their convictions. This is simply both stupid and mean…a form of ThoughtPolicing.

No #NeverTrump person “wished” anything like this election cycle. This is simply another VaPigman lie. Nobody with a working brain wanted these two thugs to be the nominees, and we worked hard to avert this shit storm.

I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I’ve been distancing myself from the Great God Cheeto…and sounding every warning bell I could ring…for over a year and a half. I bear no “responsibility” for the shit show.

My hope is that the T-rump plane and the Hellary plane collide in mid-air, and that the American people can at least have something like a sane choice for POTUS.

Oh, and that the VaPigman is swept into the Big Brother world he wants to toy with. Good and hard.

I believe it only took 14 min for rags to construct a post that completely vindicates and validates my post. Must be a record.

Once you strip out the juvenile name calling and bullying of his reply, you are left with:
(Assuming Trump loses.)
Rags got what he wanted – Trump’s defeat.
He has no plan for the aftermath (Hillary).
But it’s not his fault.

In evaluating Kristol, I’m less interested in some ideological binary than I am in the words–to–deeds equation. And in Kristol’s that equation amounted to his contribution (in a tiny and unintended way) to a reckless war that killed thousands and maimed tens of thousands. (And here I refer to U.S casualties only.)

He was one of a handful of supreme cheerleaders for a strategically misbegotten and tactically flawed clusterfark that sent over 4,500 boxes back to Dover AFB. Long after the war required radical tactical changes, Kristol was still leading the Peanut Gallery, decrying Rumsfeld’s dismissal and supporting Bremer’s hopelessly ill-informed viceroy-ship. That cost good men and women their lives.

May G-d strike me dead if I ever pretend to that kind of influence.

On another topic, while you are well within your rights to dismiss my posts as “stupid,” you don’t know me, my work, or my influence (if any) within my field. I do you the courtesy of making no such assumptions about you, and limit myself to your posts, which on the whole I find well put and likewise argued.

Your question was not a question [(“tell us what you DO believe, since it has little or nothing to do with conservatism (which Kristol has done more to advance than you ever COULD”)] but an open ended invitation or command asking me what I believe in. In regards to what? Religion? Astronomy? Cogito ergo sum? I’ve noticed that when you veer towards ad hominem your diction become imprecise.

Given the foregoing, your aspiring enthymeme (“Telling, in itself”) fails for the same reason. What does it tell? Known only to you, perhaps, as you don’t share it in your response. I’m going to assume, as you have apparently appointed yourself as arbiter of the Left/Right binary on this site, that you don’t think I’m “conservative” enough.

Why is that? Because the term “neoliberal capitalism” strikes you as too Marxist sounding, in the same way that so-called assault weapons strike gun controllers as “scary looking” and thus must be banned? Or is this your peculiar form of political correctness in which critiques of capitalism can’t be made because one would be guilty of the crime of noticing. (I assume that your strictures don’t apply to crony capitalism.)

But as you’ve decided to stake your ground on defending Kristol, I’ll share an anecdote with you. The Iraq War, which he so fecklessly cheer led (but never, I assure you, delivered a NOK notice), killed and maimed most of our people using IEDs. One afternoon, I remember watching Kristol defend Rumsfeld’s rather bizarre statement that “You go to war with the army you have” (this, mind you, in an elective war); an hour later, I’m watching a Marine pit crew use parts scrounged from Iraqi junkyards and bombed out vehicles to up armor Humvees for patrols outside the wire. The reason was that the DoD geniuses sent vehicles, some of which still had canvas sides and convertible roofs! Rumsfeld had been warned that IEDs were likely to be a problem, as any idiot who bothered to research Britain’s 1921 and 1941 Iraq incursions would have known. This was widely publicized at the time, blindly defended by those who confused criticism with disloyalty, and not fixed for almost a year.

Any idea how many dead men and women that little piece of negligence cost us? Any idea of the number of lost limbs? Ruined lives?

See Rags, you should take better inventory of your heroes. John Adams once famously observed that, “Ideology is idiocy,” and the only thing that’s “telling” is the fact that you’re still defending this guy years after he contributed his widow’s mite into making more widows.

How would you know? And given the amount of ad hominem you dump on other posters, apparently, whatever my politics are, I’m not alone in having views that “don’t sit well here.” And you, although not identified as a site writer or sponsor, somehow has authority to pronounce on what “sits well” here. Methinks you need your own blog with control over who may post. That way you can keep it “pure.”

I will revert to the original issue, one that you have failed to answer.

You defend Bill Kristol as a real conservative. I reply that he’s incompetent, feckless, and on the one issue in which he had some influence, the 2003 Iraq War, he failed the country miserably and contributed to a debacle, for which he has never been held accountable. I also reply that his brand of conservatism, i.e., U.S. adventurism abroad, is in fact outside the mainstream of historical, genuine conservatism.

But to know that, you would first have to know something about the history of the conservative movement in the United States.

Let’s be honest here…. neither Scarborough or Krisol are Republicans. They’ve been Never Trump since the beginning and have been actively working against the majority elected Republican nominee. Anything they ever say, from now until the day I die, I will never believe or trust.

Scarborough is an entertainer, period, hired by MSNBC as a pseudo-conservative to broaden the show’s demographic.

Kristol’s father Irving was an intellectual force of nature, a gifted ithinker and founding neocon (which meant something quite different before his son worked to identify the term with adventurism overseas.)

Bill’s legacy is likely to be very different. The neocons, led by Bill, could’ve forgiven Trump everything but one—the primary debate in which he called out the Iraq War for what it was. This matters because GOPe has never adequately accounted to itself, its base, or the public for the debacle. (And this is not to excuse Obama a whit for sabotaging the SOFA and creating the vacuum being so tragically filled today.)

During the Rumsfeld era, one could anticipate next week’s DoD policy by reading this week’s Weekly Standard. Bill Kristol had the right ears but filled them with the worst possible advice.

Who can blame the vets of those wars and families and friends it their casualties from deciding that just maybe GOPe didn’t really have their backs when they crossed the line from Kuwait?

Seems to me that the only way at this point for a Republican to become President is that they have to be a “Rock Star” and he won the nomination. DJT is the only viable Republican candidate that has a chance at shifting the heavily favorable, Democratic party’s electoral college map. Let’s face it. Republicans/Conservatives are charisma-challenged to excite a voter to their side. Facts and figures are too challenging for them, clouds their minds, and contradicts the propaganda they have been spoon fed since daycare.

I am horrified to see this dispute. I have the highest regard for Bill Kristol and I’m a Donald Trump supporter. See, it can be done! I used to tune in to Morning Joe periodically until this spring, I believe, when Mika seemed to talk more & more, while making less & less sense. She is very high strung. And Joe — Joe thinks he’s a Baptist preacher who goes on & on & on. I do not switch to the program at all anymore. In this dispute, I’ll stand with Bill Kristol. He has the highest integrity and I do not believe he would lie. I think Joe has some new best friends. It is very easy for people to forget what they find embarrasing. But for accuracy, I believe Kristol.

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